At a party in Davos last night, a hedge-fund mogul and a tech
mogul got to talking about their new planes. Or, more accurately,
about the planes that are going to be their new planes,
as soon as they finally get them.

The hedge-fund mogul doesn't have his plane yet because he has
been waiting for delivery of "the 650," which is what folks
intimate with the world of personal aviation call
the Gulfstream 650, the latest top-of-the-line jet from the
makers of the "G-Five" and "G-Four" (roman numerals).

Until now, the G-V and G-IV have been the absolute state-of
the-art in personal aviation — capable of carrying a dozen or so
people and a boatload of stuff above the weather, across
countries and oceans, and internationally.

(I've ridden on G-Vs and G-IVs over the years, courtesy of a
couple of companies kind enough to give me lifts. They're
awesome. If I had a couple billion dollars in my checking account
and traveled all the time, I'd probably want one.)

Only folks who are really serious about their personal
aircraft buy Gulfstreams. Poorer people, meanwhile, or people who
just don't need so much space, buy Hawkers and other puny
personal jets that make you stoop over to move around in the
cabin, can't fly across oceans, and have to detour around
weather.

Well, okay, there is another echelon of private aviation above
the Gulfstream level. That's the "private 767," "private 747,"
and "private A-380" echelon. Some of the folks who own
Gulfstreams, presumably, gaze at these customized jumbos with
feelings of longing and inferiority. But there are actually not
all that many individuals for whom buying, maintaining, and
operating massive $375 million planes — base price, before
interior design — really makes practical sense.

Anyway, at the party last night, the conversation turned to
planes, and the hedge-fund mogul announced to a small group that
he was "waiting for my 650" — referring to the fact that the new
Gulfstream planes haven't even hit the market yet.

This produced a surprisingly vehement response from the tech
mogul, who pronounced the 650 the height of gauche conspicuous
consumption, and said that he himself would be buying an older,
more stylish jet for ~$30 million and then spend $6-$7 million
refurbishing it.

"I'll have an awesome plane for half the price of your massive,
mass-produced McMansion plane," the tech mogul said, smiling and
poking his finger at the hedge-fund mogul's chest.

To which the hedge-fund manager replied:

"It's absurd to spend $7 million refurbishing a plane."

The tech mogul had a ready answer to this: "I want a
great plane." And he observed again that spending a
total of ~$35 million on the final product was better than
spending $65 million. He added that the reason he didn't have his
plane yet was that it had taken him more than a year to find the
right one.

This led to a discussion of the merits of new planes versus old
planes and bigger planes versus smaller planes — key questions to
which a third member of the group, also a tech mogul of a sort,
had ready answers. New planes are better, the quasi-tech mogul
said, because ...

They fly above the weather.

They are more efficient.

They have the latest avionics.

They're safer.

But then the quasi-tech mogul added that one of the proto-650s had
crashed in testing (last spring, in Roswell, New Mexico, near
the secret UFO place, killing four people.)

His conclusion: You don't really want to own the first model of
anything.